For cake batter
Three eggs, separated
Castor sugar
Butter
Ground rice
Maize
Scraped peel of an orange
A pinch of salt

For garnish
Well-whipped cream
Maraschino
Some almonds, roasted
Icing sugar flavoured with orange
Preserved cherries

"Weigh three eggs, and take equal quantities of castor sugar, butter, ground rice and maize (the last two together); make a light paste with them, but only use one whole egg and the yolks of the two others, add the scraped peel of an orange and a pinch of salt. Roll this paste out to the thickness of a five-shilling piece,colour it with the yolk of an egg and bake it in a cake tin in a hot oven until it is a good colour, then take it out and cut it into four equal circular pieces. Have ready some well-whipped cream and flavour it with Maraschino, put a thick layer of this on one of the rounds of pastry, then cover it with: the next round, on which also put a layer of cream, and so on until you come to the last round, which forms the top of the cake. Then split some almonds and colour them in the oven, cover the top of the cake with icing sugar flavoured with orange, and decorate the top with the almonds and preserved cherries."

This recipe was first published in "The Cook's Decameron: a study in taste, containing over two hundred recipes for Italian dishes," written by Mrs. W.G. Waters and published by William Heineman (1920). For the entire copyright-free cookbook see www.archive.org.... Photo: Mary Melfi.

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